Boston Properties Buys Bay Colony Corporate Center

The million-square-foot premier office park joins the firm's stellar portfolio with the completion of the REIT's $185 million acquisition of the suburban Boston asset. Talk about a steal of a deal; the asset traded in 2007 for $366 million.

Bay Colony Corporate Center, a 1 million-square-foot premier office park in Waltham, Mass., joins Boston Properties’ stellar portfolio with the completion of the REIT’s $185 million acquisition of the suburban Boston asset. Talk about a steal of a deal; the asset traded in 2007 for $366 million.

Occupying 58 acres 20 miles west of Boston, Bay Colony consists of four structures developed between 1985 and 1998 and featuring LEED Silver-certified Class A office space, more than 3,000 surface and parking spaces, a fitness center and cafés.

The premier property has been part of a game of hot potato over the last several years. Beacon Capital acquired the Bay Colony in 2005 for $272.5 million and sold it to Broadway Partners Real Estate Fund III L.P. for $366 million as part of a $5 billion, 24-property portfolio deal in 2007. The story does not end there. Broadway came face-to-face with the same financial trials that many a real estate company suffered during the credit crunch and in 2009, the company turned over control of Bay Colony to Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., a lender that had provided Broadway Partners with $459.6 million of bridge mezzanine debt. And before the close of 2009, Eastern Capital Real Estate came into possession of Bay Colony after having acquired a discounted loan position from Lehman Brothers, but there was yet more to the ownership story. In 2010, Bay Colony lender Prudential Financial stepped in and took control of the asset.

Boston Properties picked up Bay Colony by shelling out $41.1 million in cash and assuming a $143.9 million senior mortgage loan carrying a fixed interest rate of 6.53 percent.

With the closing of the Bay Colony acquisition, Boston Properties has significantly enhanced its already substantial Waltham portfolio, which, prior to the completion of the transaction, consisted of nine office assets.